


I rose up from the dead (I do it all the time)

by girlsarewolves



Series: exchanges [6]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Arrowverse
Genre: Drabble, Fic Exchange, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-13 06:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: Reinvention. It was part of her philosophy. It was a way of life, a means of survival. Eventually who you were couldn’t cut it any longer, and it was time to become someone else. Dinah Laurel Lance learned that lesson early on. When her father died, she changed. When she met Oliver Queen, she changed. When she lost him, too, she changed. When she killed the man who took her father from her, she changed.





	I rose up from the dead (I do it all the time)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).

* * *

Reinvention.

  
  


It was part of her philosophy. It was a way of life, a means of survival.

  
  


Eventually who you were couldn’t cut it any longer, and it was time to become someone else.

  
  


Dinah Laurel Lance learned that lesson early on. When her father died, she changed. When she met Oliver Queen, she changed. When she lost him, too, she changed. When she killed the man who took her father from her, she changed.

  
  


That was the change that lasted the longest.

  
  


Dinah became whoever she needed to be to survive - to try and please the people she wanted in her life, or the people who she owed, or the people who had the power to snuff her out. Dinah became Black Siren became Laurel.

  
  


It’s that last one that was the trickiest to pull off. She played the part plenty of times, but it was a costume. A mask that she begrudgingly put on and was always eager to tear off. A spiteful charade. She got some satisfaction out of it, at first.

  
  


Becoming Laurel though - that was the hard part.

  
  


But reinvention was her game.

  
  


And maybe sometimes you got to become someone better, not worse. Someone kinder, not meaner.

  
  


That was what scared her. Becoming Laurel was like taking so many steps back, going back to a state before all the hurt and anger and bitterness had taken over, before she made herself too hard and too cruel to get close - to keep from losing more pieces of herself. And Laurel, this world’s Dinah Laurel Lance, she gave away pieces of herself over and over and over, never learning her lesson.

  
  


She never became a killer, either. Laurel might have had her own demons that drove her to bottles and pills, but she didn’t have blood on her hands, dead eyes staring back at her that she used to laugh at.

  
  


It was so much easier to live with your sins when you convinced yourself you loved them.

  
  


Reinvention.

  
  


She used to think it was easy. Maybe she had just been taking the easy way out all along. Maybe she had been as weak and pathetic as she’d thought of her late doppelganger had been. Maybe existing and survival and living weren’t all one and the same. Maybe she was stronger than she’d given herself - either self - credit for.

  
  


Dinah was ready to become Black Canary.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> I went with a more somber but hopeful interpretation of some of the lyrics (the one used for the title, the 'the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now') and the song's theme of reinventing yourself to come out on top. Something I wish had been explored more was how e2-Laurel kept talking badly about e1-Laurel and they only barely touched on it when she was finally redeemed, and I think that was an angle that needed more depth, so I tried to give it a little more attention. Hopefully it came across okay! :D


End file.
